Advertisement
Published: November 19th 2015
Edit Blog Post
Peace Shrine Wednesday 30th September 2015 An unforgettable experience in Hiroshima is a visit to the Peace Museum, which documents the devastation caused to the area by the atomic bomb dropped on 6th August 1945. We opted to take an audio tour of the exhibition that proved to be both insightful and harrowing in equal measure. We walked through the museum taking in the sights of kids bicycles, lunch boxes, uniforms and parts of buildings devastated by the blast. It was a very moving experience, shattered by the influx of the whole of year 8 of Hiroshima's version of Grange Hill. Hundreds of children running through the museum shouting and laughing. Nevertheless, its one of the must see things whilst in Hiroshima and a memory that will stick for a long time.
We then headed outside into the peace park where we were able to witness the year 8 students placing their folded cranes into the perspex boxes which case thousands of hand folded paper cranes (birds, not the big construction machines). This was a symbol to remember Sadako sasakii who was a girl that died as part of the after effects of the blast. She died of leukemia at the
Kids putting their cranes inside casesage of 12 but in order to save herself believed that folding 1000 paper cranes would give her a wish which she would use to save her life. Sadly she passed away, however her friends and other pupils around the country then continued to make these cranes in her memory and she became a symbol herself to the devastation of nuclear war.
Thursday 1st October 2015 We were quickly approaching our next country, Korea, but with no plan of where to go and what to see, we decided to spend a day in Starbucks taking advantage of their Jazz music and free WiFi to plan Korea. We also looked on Trip Advisor for somewhere to eat that evening and came across a place which was quite close to our Hotel. Upon arrival, we noticed that it is one of the many places we've probably seen in Japan and been too nervous to venture into. It was a small restaurant in a residential looking area which had their entrance covered by what I can only describe as curtains. Everything was written in Japanese and the clientele were also Japanese. Usually we would've given it a miss feeling too intimidated
Paper cranesto enter and embarrassed about walking out not being able to successfully order anything. Nevertheless we did on this occasion enter and had a great experience. The food is known as Okonomiyaki and is basically lots of shredded cabbage, noodles and some sauce fried on a hot surface (think greasy spoon cafe with rows of bacon, eggs, sausage all frying together). This is then topped off with an egg to make some sort of omelette. You then eat this from the hot surface it is cooked on. The restaurant was so hot and the chefs were soaked in sweat, having said that they were laughing and joking with the locals and I'm pretty sure I made out that they were discussing CSI with each other. Following this meal, we headed back to the hotel for our final night in Hiroshima.
Friday 2nd October 2015 We were leaving Hiroshima today and heading to our final destination before venturing to South Korea, but before we did we wanted to see one more sight just outside of Hiroshima.
We checked out of the hotel and made our way to the train station. We put our backpacks into lockers at the
Dinnerstation and jumped on the local train and then the ferry to Miyajima Shrine. This is a famous site in Japan and has something to do with the Shinto religion. Its basically a wooden structure just off the coast and depending on the tide you can either walk right up to it, or as we found, when the tide is in, you are able to get some good pictures of the shrine surrounded by water. We didn't spend long here, but whilst we were there we managed to sweat a bucket load in the hot sun and take pictures from all angles. We then headed back to the ferry via the obligatory tourist shops and then upon boarding the boat we got some additional photos of the shrine. It was a nice few hours and the structure itself is pretty big, possibly the height of 2 double decker buses, which is the global measurement for height, as is a football pitch when measuring length, that being said, the width was probably the same width as the six yard box.
We then made our way back to the train station, collected our bags and boarded the Shinkansen and made our
Dinner at local restaurantway south to Kitakyushu (train station confusingly called Kokura).
Hiroshima was a nice stop on our travels. Very sad and moving to learn of their history, but nice to see that they have rebuilt a lovely town full of friendly Japanese people, which has been the case in most Japanese towns/cities so far.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.175s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 17; qc: 71; dbt: 0.0939s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb